


Alternate Reality

by sasha_b



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-12
Updated: 2012-04-12
Packaged: 2017-11-03 12:15:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/381245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sasha_b/pseuds/sasha_b
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Otis comes back from the high school instead of Shane.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alternate Reality

**Author's Note:**

> SPOILERS for season two, episode three.

Hershel and Maggie and Patricia are scrambling around them, taking the supplies from Otis' hands, Patricia hugging him briefly once, before they're all inside again, Lori screaming at Hershel to _come on come on_ as Carl is starting to seize.

Rick stands in the yard, hand clasping Otis' shoulder, smile frozen on his face, eyes canting to the right, past the big man's head, looking to the truck he'd rattled up in, seeing the blood on the front bumper, the moon bleaching Rick's face to bone white and shadow. His head begins to pound and the hand he's grasping Otis with becomes an force of shoving, _pushing_ the other man out of the way as he strides to the truck, steps quick, mind quicker, going to a place he doesn't want to imagine.

Creaking leather at his side; the gun he always carries is heavy in its holster and he yanks the truck door open, searching for something he knows is gone and yet he can't process it, can't fathom it, knows if he just _checks_ everywhere, the bed, the undercarriage, the passenger seat, he'll find the crooked smile and the damage and the anger and the old friendship and the warm nights and the safety in numbers and the 22 necklace - _ostentatious, brother, god is that ugly_ he'd said - but all he finds is the **Police** cap and the shotgun.

And the ferric smell of fresh blood and he leans his hands on the doorframe, looking, still looking, throat locked closed, lips tightly compressed, Carl's blood still vaguely marking his face a bright red - a bright, beautiful color that this dying, sepia toned world can't remember.

"I'm - I'm sorry," Otis says from behind him, "he...he hurt his ankle real bad dropping from the window, you see, and well, I'd hurt my leg and we were surrounded and it just got bad and one of us had to make it back-"

He stops when Rick breaths out a _shhhhhhhhhhh_ that is snake-like in its sibilance. The leaves blow over their heads and Rick shuts the door slowly, a _snikt_ that is louder than anything in the world, save his heart, which is thunderous and all the timpani he can possibly remember. 

Otis opens his mouth again, but Rick brushes past him and stagger-walks to the porch, drunk on emotion and the lack of blood in his system. It's all gone to Carl, see, and while he's not sorry in the least (he's my son, my boy) he wishes he could have bled a little for Shane, too.

He chokes and bile floods his mouth and he puts his head down on his crossed arms and weeps suddenly for something he had never expected to lose.


End file.
